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Voters Trickle To Polls In Sudan Amid Boycott Calls
by Peter King
KHARTOUM (AFP) - Sudanese trickled to the polls Wednesday at the start of a 10-day election that incumbent Islamist President Omar al-Beshir and his party look set to win because of a massive opposition boycott.
No more than a handful of voters were seen at any one time in most polling stations around Sudan's dusty capital Khartoum and neighboring Omdurman, with some booths deserted and closing early for the day.
All Sudan's main opposition parties, most of which are involved in a civil war with Beshir's government, were boycotting the vote to protest against a "totalitarian regime" they say has no mandate to rule or organize elections after it seized power in a 1989 military coup.
"No one's interested in these elections. Who would they vote for? All the candidates are government candidates," opposition Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) official Tayyeb al-Abbasi said.
Only one of around 10 polling stations visited by AFP witnessed keen interest, and in that case a DUP dissident was standing for parliament against a ruling National Congress (NC) party candidate.
Opposition Umma Party officials meanwhile said the generally low turnout was "proof" that Beshir lacks support, claiming that most Sudanese still back the opposition parties as they did in the last multi-party election in 1986.
There were no immediate reports of voter turnout in other parts of Africa's largest country, although voting was not taking place in opposition-held areas of the war-torn south.
But Beshir shrugged off the apparent lack of interest, telling reporters that the right to "boycott is part of the freedom" enjoyed in Sudan, as he cast his vote for president in one Khartoum polling station.
Beshir has said the elections are designed to fill the vacuum he created when he dissolved parliament and imposed a state of emergency on December 12th last year in a bid to sideline his former ally-turned-rival Hassan al-Turabi.
Western diplomats said the best the government could hope for was to secure enough turnout to show it had some popular support, but added most people regarded the election as a farce and a formality to endorse Beshir.
State-controlled television and radio has been urging people to turn out in recent days.
Vying for Beshir's job are the former ousted president Jaafar Nimeiri and three little-known candidates.
"They just want to create the impression that there is some kind of competition while there is none whatsoever," the DUP's Abbasi said.
Observers from the Arab League and the Organization of African Unity arrived in Sudan to monitor the vote, but the European Union declined an invitation to send a team to avoid giving the election its stamp of approval.
Election officials and foreign diplomats both said they expected the voting to be fair, while opposition officials say the lack of competition means there is no need to rig them as they claim Beshir has done in the past.
Seats in the 360-member parliament, including a quota of 35 seats for women voters, were up for grabs in the election which still had nine days to run after polling closed for the day at 11:00 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Wednesday.
But newspaper reports said 112 ruling party candidates had already been declared de facto winners since they stood uncontested and ballots were not being cast for them.
Of Sudan's 30 million people, around 12 million are eligible to vote, but most favor the opposition Umma party of former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi and the DUP which won two-thirds of the vote between them in 1986.
A boycott has also been called by the National Democratic Alliance, an umbrella for the northern and southern opposition, including the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which has been waging war against Khartoum since 1983.
Also boycotting is the People's National Congress (PNC) - a splinter faction of the ruling NC party - which is run by Turabi, the Islamist ideologue who broke with Beshir in a power struggle a year ago.
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